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Facebook's New Captcha Test: 'Upload A Clear Photo of Your Face' (wired.com)

Posted by msmash on from the yay-or-nay dept.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Facebook may soon ask you to "upload a photo of yourself that clearly shows your face," to prove you're not a bot. The company is using a new kind of captcha to verify whether a user is a real person. According to a screenshot of the identity test shared on Twitter on Tuesday and verified by Facebook, the prompt says: "Please upload a photo of yourself that clearly shows your face. We'll check it and then permanently delete it from our servers." The process is automated, including identifying suspicious activity and checking the photo. To determine if the account is authentic, Facebook looks at whether the photo is unique.

15 of 302 comments (clear)

  1. WHY? by tripleevenfall · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why do Facebook, Apple, and others thing public information (like what your face looks like) is more secure than a private key that exists only in your mind?

    1. Re:WHY? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Because they want to build a comprehensive and, more importantly, up to date image of what you look like for their facial recognition software.

      I'm sure there's some guy out there who gets a massive boner when he thinks about with one hi-res crowd shot of people they can pull sophisticated buying demographics to sell to advertisers.

    2. Re:WHY? by religionofpeas · · Score: 4, Interesting

      And in this case, FB isn't interested in adding security to your account, they just want a new way to prove that it is a person behind the account instead of a robot. Nothing to do with security.

      We're already at the point where a computer can generate unlimited artificial faces that are good enough to fool such a system:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

      I guess it has nothing to do with security, but rather with building a database of people, or analyzing your facial features and linking them to your preferences.

    3. Re: WHY? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It wasn't the right wing that came up with the LGBTQI2SGMARHN+ concept. They aren't the ones pushing 87 different genders. They aren't the ones spending decades in college obsessing over race, and gender, and sexual preference, and other ways to classify people. The right wing is far less divisive than the left wing.

  2. No thanks by Arkham · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I get closer and closer to deleting Facebook permanently every day.

    --
    - Vincit qui patitur.
    1. Re:No thanks by Oligonicella · · Score: 4, Insightful

      because it contradicts whatever the Facebook group think is

      You left off the important part.

  3. Obviously by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 5, Informative

    They can't determine if a photo is unique unless they don't really delete the photo from their servers. (They probably keep a "fingerprint" of the photo, which would be the most valuable part for spying on people anyway.)

    1. Re:Obviously by omnichad · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This. They're probably going to point a neural network at this face-fingerprint data and train their auto-tagger. Right now, bad lighting or an odd angle will throw off the automatic face recognition.

  4. Hi, we've lied repeatedly before but this time... by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Jeez.

    Facebook has been caught lying and engaging in dubious behavior dozens of times and the founder says you have no right to privacy (but zealously protects his own privacy).

    Wake UP!

    --
    She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
  5. Clash of the bots... by Freischutz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm going to enjoy seeing that thing clash with this one: https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...

  6. Facebook closed my account over this by cstacy · · Score: 5, Interesting
    My FB account had about six "friends" on it: immediate family members. Didn't ever post anything or upload any information, just looked at photos they posted, pressed Like sometimes, and occasional IMs. I got this "upload a photo" roadblock, although it also said it was going to compare it to my Profile photo to make sure it was me. I didn't have any Profile photo, of course, so that's bullshit. Tried logging in three more times over the course of three weeks. Yesterday tried again, but the account has gone from suspended to terminated.

    They said it was for "suspicious activity". (Of which of course there was none.)
    I say it was because I failed to upload content for them to monetize.
    Interesting business decision.

  7. Take a photo of the chic your stalking by wolfheart111 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Then upload it to facebook and get access to the account? Is that how this works?

    --
    [($)]
  8. First My Phone Number, Now This? by Tempest_2084 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Facebook kept badgering me for years to give them my phone number 'just in case' to which I repeatedly said no. Finally they stopped bugging me about it and all was good for a few weeks. Then I got a new notice that said 'help verify that this is your number and keep your account up to date'. Lo and behold that was indeed my phone number, but I never gave it to them. I don't know where they scraped it from, but they got it. That left me creeped out for a long time and I considered closing my account. In the end I kept it, but I watched what I posted and really dropped my usage. If I get this prompt I'll drop it completely. I'm not a social media junkie, so I'll live. In fact the only reason I'm still on it is for a few interest groups that I'm involved with who moved to FB (terrible decision) and so my family can tell me who died and who had a kid. Both of which I could live without.

  9. Kodachrome by jabberw0k · · Score: 4, Funny

    A new photo of me? I'll have to wait a week to get this film developed, and then go to Walgreens to have it scanned so I can put it on a usb stick to bring it home. Right sure.

  10. Dear Facebook by nuckfuts · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Here is a recent photograph of my naked ass. Please apply lip marks and return it to me for verification.